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Masterchef Recap 25 May: Beached As Bro

Tonight, we learn exactly how hard a sausage sizzle can be. Days after Rachel came to the realisation that she’s in a dog-eat-dog competition rather than a team bonding exercise, it’s time for another team bonding exercise.

In the mansion, Craig’s pleased with himself despite his loss yesterday. Hayden’s also pleased with Craig’s loss. Dani’s pretty sure it’s a team challenge today. Well, it’s Wednesday. Nobody else seems to have cottoned on.

They arrive at the kitchen to find that Matt Preston has dressed as the Masterchef fireball. It is indeed a team challenge – they’ll be feeding 500 nippers and their parents at Cronulla beach! There’s not a lot of room for creativity – it’s a mandatory sausage sizzle and gelato affair. Is it safe to serve gelato at Cronulla? Sounds a bit ethnic.

Big fans of Streets icecream

Hayden’s asked his opinion, as the local expert on nippers. They want their sausages hot and their ice-cream cold. Thank you so much for that insight, Hayden.

Sun, Craig and Peter, as the winners from Monday, have to decide amongst themselves who the captain is. They decide on Craig. Well, actually Craig just declares himself the captain. Awesome. Sun’s ropeable. Craig picks Michael as the red team captain. Everyone goes ‘aww’ as he walks up, perfectly illustrating his perceived threat level. Craig claims that he’s picked a worthy adversary, rather than ‘playing the game’. Nobody believes him.

Craig continues not to play the game by picking bookies’ favourite Hayden, He justifies it with a reference to his abs. Awkward. Michael thinks that Danielle is a sausage expert and picks her. This seems so unlikely. They speed through the rest of the picks.

The teams split up to determine who’s going to be shopping, who’s going to be making gelato all night and who’s going to be sitting around not doing much until tomorrow. The power instantly goes to Craig’s head. He and Cleo will be shopping, and Billy and Dani will be making gelato. Hayden’s contribution is to veto a bacon and egg roll. That is hugely un-Australian.

This is our national flag

The red team, meanwhile, have decided to make a fancy sausage for the parents and a sawdust sausage for the idiot kids. Quirky Danielle and Michael will be doing the shopping, and Kate and Ellie will be making gelato. Somehow Michael has been stuck with Goth Matt, who doesn’t strike me as an asset in a beach environment.

As team shopping arrives at a totally deserted Coles, Danielle talks up the challenge of selling icecream and sausages to hungry eight year olds. I almost believe her. Craig has learnt from Don’s cupcake success last year and grabs a ton of lollies. Hard to go wrong. Meanwhile, Michael and Danielle talk up how cheap Coles is.

Team Gelato arrive at the gelato shop at midnight. There’s so much late night action going on this year! Kate has never made gelato on an industrial scale before. Did that actually need to be clarified? Ellie looks hugely sleep-deprived in the interview box.

Both teams are making chocolate, lemon and vanilla. So boring! No blood orange? Not even a strawberry? Michael’s great idea of getting real chocolate backfires as the red team cannot work out how to melt it. They figure it out eventually – in a bowl over hot water. Meanwhile, the blue team doesn’t have anywhere near enough lemons. Didn’t they work this out prior to shopping?

It’s five am and everyone back in the house is getting up. Hayden apparently sleeps in his swimmers. Quirky Danielle loves the buzz of energy from a team challenge but hates not being 100% in control of her destiny. She then pulls out a crystal and tells us about its healing properties. I bet she does tarot readings.

They arrive at the beach. Every dollar raised goes to Cronulla surf club. Andrew is wearing an akubra. I would not let my child buy a sausage from him. Or Jay. Or Goth Matt. Goth Matt looks unbelievably out of place in a beach environment.

Matt and Sun preparing for the team challenge

Red team are totally dependant on Danielle’s expertise. I predict this will go incredibly badly. They’re doing a breakfast special to get an early lead. It’s a sausage and egg McMuffin. This challenge ends at 11.30, surely it’s all a breakfast special. Amazingly nobody in the surf-lifesaving community wants to eat a big meal before going swimming, so the response is lacklustre.

In an attempt to drum up interest Jay starts shouting at people from the stand. When this doesn’t work, he starts wandering around. He’s actually scaring people. Someone gives him $2 to go away. Jay forces him to take a sandwich. This is really not okay.

The gelato teams are still going. The red team have been measuring in pounds! They realise only after they’ve poured everything in. It is probably not going to be okay.

The red team are making one sausage every five minutes. This is because Danielle doesn’t know anything. I bet they’ve just got the machine on the ‘slow’ setting. Michael helps by continuing to shout ‘I need sausages now!’

After the ad break it is revealed they do in fact have the machine on the wrong setting. Nice one. Michael keeps shouting. Danielle says there will be some in ten minutes to shut him up. It is almost certainly not true.

Back at the beach, and Kumar has gotten hilariously competitive. The blue team have decided to ‘localise’ the menu. Craig, nobody is going to believe you live in Cronulla. Gary and George like their sign. The red team sign is terrible! George cannot contain his hatred of the sign. Shannon is in charge of it. What is the point of her?

George comments that the ‘nippers are out doing their nipper things’. He clearly has no idea what they actually do.

They...run? Swim, I guess?

Red team are blaming the machine settings for their failure to produce more than ten sausages. You set the settings.

Cleo explains that you need to clean off a BBQ occasionally. She’s taking her time and cooking the sausages correctly. Sun hates this. Craig brings down a tray with four sausages on it. What is he doing?

Cleo says she’ll have sausages ready in five minutes. Two minutes later, Sun asks how much longer. Cleo says three minutes and Sun nearly stabs her. Finally, Sun gives a sausage away for free and calls it a good omen. This is a strange way to make money.

Let people put sauce on their own rolls! Nobody likes a sauce fascist. Michael’s strategy for winning is to make sure his stall is busy all the time. Well, yes.

Back in the commentary box Jay is really pretending he was the team captain. I think this means the red team won. If they lost he’d be establishing an alibi – ‘I wish I’d been able to help the red team, but I was trapped in a closet’. They send pretty lady Arena out to walk around and flog sausages. That is genius.

Sun spots Arena and gets worried. She doesn’t do anything about it though, apart from vaguely suggesting that Hayden get out of the back room. Swap with him! Nah, better to stand around and complain.

Gelato’s here! Blue team have a massive queue, which is one hundred percent due to their free toppings for kids. Dani reckons she’s scooping a scoop every two seconds. I doubt that.

For some reason the judges are assessing the food, even though it has no bearing on the result. The red team’s sausage is ‘surprisingly good’, if underseasoned. The blue team have done a stellar job. Matt has a minor emotional moment as he eats the ‘big Aussie dog’. He’s used to being the big dog on this show.

Matt Preston and Wife

Hayden is finally unleashed on the public. He grabs the PA and makes what sounds like an official surf club announcement spruiking the blue team. He is an absolute genius. Red team may well kill him. They want to do something about it but Michael can’t find the PA.

Kate finally finds the PA. Nobody is listening. She somehow manages to make it sound like it’s the Cronulla Surf Club versus the Red Team.

Time to judge the red team’s gelato. Matt asks George ‘shall we taste’? George is already eating it. The flavours are good, particularly the lemon sorbet. The blue team’s icecream is hugely sugary and kind of paddlepop flavoured. The kids are loving it sick, unsurprisingly.

Someone’s given Hayden a pair of Cronulla sluggos. Sun tells him to get his kit off. You don’t have to tell him twice. Jay starts shouting abuse in response. Jay thinks that nobody will buy a sausage off a man in budgie smugglers. Anywhere else on earth that would be true, but surf clubs are strange places.

There are limits, however

It’s the final countdown. Goth Matt’s off to spruik. This is probably a mistake. Shannon is standing around doing nothing. Everyone’s been holding out for a bargain – there’s a massive rush as the teams discount their wares. Also it’s because everyone has finished training and is actually hungry. Jay starts selling off bowls of mince. He has not factored in the cost of the actual bowl.

It’s all over red rover. Matt Preston is pleased with the ratings bump that this stunt has provided.

Red’s positives are their relentless selling and their gelato. Their negatives are basically everything that Quirky Danielle did. Michael reckons they’ve won.

Gary is proud of the blue team, for following directions and tricking kids with sprinkles. They also think they’ve won. They were ninety minutes slower off the mark, and completely wasted Hayden.

Over four grand has been raised for the surf club. That’s nice, but someone is still losing today. Shannon has not faced an elimination yet. Who is she again? The winner, with $2434, is the red team! Michael and Jay hug, then realise they are manly men so start punching each other.

By far the most hilarious thing for me was the inevitable pretentious tasting of the sausages in buns: George goes “it’s got everything, the sausage, the onion…” and then trails off. Or did he make some inane comment about how “the flavours work together”? Well, duh. I can’t remember, I was laughing too hard.

I am going to have to stop reading this at work. I kept laughing throughout it, making it very evident that:
1. I am currently not doing anything productive/work related and
2. I may or may not be insane.